Eli5: I have a piece of metal in front of me. How can I determine wich material this is.

Question

The question is only metaphorical tho, what are the ways to identify some physical “metals” from other ones ?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Density is probably the easiest.

You could check the hardness. Alkali and alkali earth metals tend to be really soft (and highly reactive, so it’s not likely you’d have a pure sample sitting in front of you.)

Then melting point. Most metals have a pretty high melting point, but a few are lower. (Mercury and Mercury’s safe cousin gallium.)

Color could be helpful if it’s not silver. (Few metals aren’t shiny and silver).

And then… if you had a galvanic cell you could do some plating and figure it out via the activity series.